Chief Wilton Littlechild should not have gifted the Pope an eagle\u002Dfeather headdress — an artifact of profound spiritual embodiment to us.
His words flooded my mind last week when Chief Wilton Littlechild presented, as a gift to the Pope, an eagle feather headdress. The photo I saw of the Pope, the headdress adorning his head, was spiritually sickening to me.
Other activists and I sometimes wonder if some men recognized as Indigenous leaders suffer onto themselves the weight of an inferiority complex. It is something they can shed from their shoulders anytime they wish, but they cling to it instead. The giving of eagle feathers to the Pope was to me, a vile mockery of First Nations spiritual beliefs. These leaders have lost not only my respect by defending what Littlechild did, but also that of probably tens of thousands of other First Nations individuals who honour the eagle feather as something of great spiritual significance and purpose.
The Pope said in an interview on his return to Rome that it had not “come to mind” that he should mention “genocide” in his apologies. Didn’t come to mind? I wonder why it is that Indigenous leadership didn’t bring it to mind, bluntly and forcibly, to the Pope. Why did they neglect to do so? Perhaps they feared that the reaction of the “master” would be too difficult to endure.Article content
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